Gulliver's Travels Trivia
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57 free Gulliver's Travels trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Gulliver's Travels trivia quiz takes all four voyages in turn. Lilliput brings the six-inch people, the egg-cracking schism, the high heels and low heels, the captured fleet and the palace fire put out in the least dignified way possible. Brobdingnag brings the 72-foot farmer, Glumdalclitch, the travelling box and the eagle. The third voyage covers the flying island, the sunbeam-from-cucumber projectors of Lagado, the ghosts of Glubbdubdrib and the immortal struldbrugs, and the fourth brings the horses and the Yahoos. The rest is about Swift and the book's afterlife: why the manuscript was copied in another hand, the publisher who cut the dangerous bits, the Scriblerus Club, Pope's verses, Thackeray's outrage, big-endian and little-endian, Miyazaki's flying castle, Telemann's suite and Jack Black. There are questions on Stella, Ménière's disease and the deanery of St Patrick's for good measure. Every answer has been checked against the Wikipedia articles on the novel, its author, Lilliput, Laputa, Brobdingnag and the Yahoos, and each explanation adds one detail worth passing on. It suits book clubs, students of satire and anyone who has ever cracked an egg at the wrong end.
30 of 57 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which year was Gulliver's Travels first published?
1726
Gulliver's Travels was first published anonymously in London in October 1726 and was an immediate success, with imitations, parodies and 'keys' following within months.
Q 02What is Gulliver's first name?
Lemuel
The narrator is Lemuel Gulliver; the original title page presents him as the author, and the full title begins Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, In Four Parts.
Q 03What was Gulliver's profession before he became a ship's captain?
Surgeon
He sails as a ship's surgeon on the first voyages and only takes command of a merchantman in Part IV, out of boredom.
Q 04What is the name of the ship wrecked in a storm on Gulliver's first voyage?
The Antelope
The Antelope, under Captain William Prichard, sailed from Bristol in May 1699 and was driven by a violent storm to the north-west of Van Diemen's Land, today's Tasmania.
Q 05Roughly how tall are the Lilliputians?
Less than 6 inches
The Lilliputians are less than 6 inches tall, roughly one-twelfth of human height, so everything in their land is scaled down by the same ratio.
Q 06What trivial question divides the two warring religious sects of Lilliput?
Which end of a boiled egg to crack open
The sects fight over which end of a boiled egg to crack open: after a young prince cut his finger on the big end, an edict ordered every egg broken at the small end.
Q 07What are the two rival Lilliputian political parties, parodies of the Tories and Whigs, distinguished by?
The height of their heels
The Tories were the High-Heels and the Whigs the Low-Heels; the emperor's heir hedges by wearing one heel higher than the other.
Q 08Which rival island nation's fleet does Gulliver capture for Lilliput?
Blefuscu
Gulliver wades the 800-yard channel and tows away the fleet of Blefuscu, Lilliput's rival standing for France; his refusal to conquer it outright turns the emperor against him.
Q 09What unorthodox method does Gulliver use to put out a fire in the Lilliputian palace?
He urinates on it
Gulliver urinates on the flames and puts the fire out in three minutes; the empress is so disgusted that the act is later listed among the articles of impeachment against him.
Q 10What punishment is Gulliver sentenced to in Lilliput before he escapes?
Blinding
Gulliver is sentenced to blinding, urged by his friend Reldresal as a lenient alternative to death; the articles parody the impeachment of the Tory ministers Harley and Bolingbroke.
Q 11Which Lilliputian official is usually read as a caricature of Sir Robert Walpole?
Flimnap, the lord high treasurer
Flimnap, the lord high treasurer, is read as Walpole: his rope-dancing for court favour mocks the Whig minister's political agility, and he later accuses Gulliver of an affair with his wife.
Q 12What is the name of the land of giants Gulliver reaches on his second voyage?
Brobdingnag
The word Brobdingnagian sits in the Oxford English Dictionary as a synonym for gigantic; the grass there is as tall as trees.
Q 13Roughly how tall is the farmer who finds Gulliver in the land of giants?
About 72 feet
Q 21On the island of Glubbdubdrib, whom does Gulliver converse with?
The ghosts of historical figures
The magician summons Julius Caesar, Brutus, Homer, Aristotle and Descartes for a debate on ancients versus moderns.
Q 22What are the struldbrugs of Luggnagg?
People who are immortal but still age
They lack eternal youth, suffer every infirmity of age and are declared legally dead at eighty.
Q 23Which real country does Gulliver visit at the end of his third voyage?
Japan
In Japan Gulliver lands at Xamoschi and, posing as a Dutchman, asks the Emperor to excuse him from trampling on the crucifix, as Dutch traders were required to do.
The giants are about twelve times human size, putting the farmer at about 72 feet; Gulliver says he looked as tall as an ordinary spire steeple and took about ten yards at every stride.
Q 14What is the name of the giant farmer's daughter who becomes Gulliver's nurse and companion?
Glumdalclitch
Glumdalclitch, whose name means 'little nurse', is nine years old and, at not above forty feet, little for her age; she goes with Gulliver into the queen's service.
Q 15What does the farmer do with Gulliver before selling him to the queen?
Exhibits him for money as a curiosity
The farmer exhibits Gulliver for money as a curiosity at inns and market towns, working him so hard he wastes away; fearing he will die, the farmer sells him to the queen.
Q 16What carries Gulliver's travelling box off and drops it into the sea, ending his stay among the giants?
A giant eagle
A giant eagle seizes the travelling box by its ring and, harried by other eagles, drops it into the sea, where the crew of an English ship find Gulliver floating.
Q 17What especially horrifies the giant king in Gulliver's account of Europe?
The use of guns and cannon
James Gillray's 1803 print recast the scene with George III as the giant king peering at a tiny Napoleon.
Q 18What is Laputa, the setting of the third voyage?
A flying island
Laputa is a flying island about four and a half miles across, held aloft by a giant lodestone set in an adamantine base and steered by tilting the magnet.
Q 19Which absurd project is under way at the Grand Academy of Lagado?
Extracting sunbeams from cucumbers
One projector has spent eight years extracting sunbeams from cucumbers, to be sealed in vials and let out to warm the air in raw summers; he begs Gulliver for money.
Q 20The Grand Academy of Lagado satirises which real institution?
The Royal Society
The Academy of Projectors mocks the Royal Society, whose Philosophical Transactions reported experiments Swift found absurd; its impractical projectors leave Balnibarbi's fields in ruin.
Q 24What are the Houyhnhnms?
Intelligent, civilised horses
Swift inverts the old textbook definition of man as the rational animal by making horses reasonable and humans brutes.
Q 25What are the Yahoos?
Savage, filthy human-like creatures
The Yahoos are savage, filthy human-like creatures kept as beasts by the Houyhnhnms; Swift coined the word, which now means a crude, brutish person.
Q 26Why does Gulliver end up in the land of the horses?
His crew mutinies and sets him adrift
The mutineers turn pirate; the horses' assembly later expels him as a dangerous Yahoo with a semblance of reason.
Q 27Which kindly Portuguese captain rescues Gulliver against his will at the end of the book?
Pedro de Mendez
Don Pedro de Mendez, captain of the Lisbon ship, treats Gulliver with great courtesy, lending him clothes and money; his generosity undercuts Gulliver's contempt for all humans.
Q 28How does Gulliver spend his time after returning home from his last voyage?
Talking to the horses in his stables
He cannot bear to live among 'Yahoos', avoids his wife and family and becomes a recluse.
Q 29Which captain of the Hopewell invites Gulliver aboard for his third voyage?
Robinson
Captain William Robinson, a Cornishman commanding the Hopewell, had sailed with Gulliver before; he offers double the usual pay and a promise to follow Gulliver's advice on sea-affairs.
Q 30Which London publisher first issued the book, using five printing houses to beat pirates?
Benjamin Motte
Benjamin Motte received the manuscript anonymously, dropped at his door from a coach at night, and published it in London after cutting the passages he judged most dangerous.